Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field is looking for an architect.
After Tuesday's meeting of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission, no airport experience is necessary.
Bill Walker, the newest member of the commission that sets policy for the state's largest airport, pressed Clinton National officials on wording in the request for qualifications that required airport experience and therefore eliminated perhaps more imaginative firms from consideration.
"What I think we're doing is hurting ourselves because we don't know what we might get from somebody that's more creative, innovative or whatever, because if you haven't done it before, you really don't get a shot at this," he said. "I take issue with that."
The airport is looking to replace Alliance, a full-service architecture and design firm in Minneapolis. The firm was behind the biggest changes in the airport, including remaking the passenger terminal and the concourse. The firm was paid $1.2 million for the concourse redo. It is eligible to compete for the next professional-services contract.
Clinton National also is looking for an architect to be available for opportunities in the airport's industrial and commercial properties. That architect will require no airport experience.
As the request for qualifications was written, airport officials insisted it didn't require airport experience but conceded such experience would help the firms compete for the contract.
Section 8 of the request for qualifications included the phrases "most recently completed airport projects, minimum of five" and a "list of all current airport projects."
"The first package is geared toward an airport architect with terminal experience because that is the real focus of those projects that we anticipate," said Tom Clarke, the airport's deputy executive director. "It does not prohibit a team with more limited experience from submitting. It does inform them that the committee will be looking for that experience. It could put them in a less competitive situation."
Walker said the language was a disincentive for firms without the experience to apply.
"It suggested to me you have restricted the marketplace and states emphatically that they've done at least five and have a current one," he said. "That on its face eliminates people before we even get started. They never even get to the point we can consider these options.
Bryan Malinowski, the airport's executive director, said that typically what happens is that a firm without airport experience partners with one that has experience. Alliance, for instance, partnered with two local architecture firms, one of which was minority-owned.
"You can meet the experience through one or both partners," he said. "Every partner doesn't have to have it."
He also said the airport could amend the request for qualifications to make that clear.
That is what commission member Jill Floyd suggested.
"One way to address this is [to say} partners are OK and if you are a firm that does not have airport experience, partner with a firm that has airport experience as a clarification," she said. "The prime doesn't have to be the one with the experience."
Airport officials agreed to prepare the addendum immediately.